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We went whale watching the other day.

We were on a large boat that could hold over 200 people and, to be honest, I didn’t have such high hopes for the adventure. I wanted to see whales jumping out of the water, fully extended so I could capture some sweet shots of them mid-air. In my head, that’s what whale watching was…but things don’t usually ever turn out the way I imagine they will, so I tried to have low expectations.

It was like the time I was in Hawaii and my friend and I randomly, spur of the moment, decided to go skydiving. We pulled up to small trailer at the edge of the island, were rushed into some harnesses, signed our lives away and stared at each other in disbelief that we were about to jump out of a plane. A few minutes later they informed us that we wouldn’t be able to jump after all…the weather had gotten too bad. We did get to go a few days later, but we lost a bit of the luster that came with the spontaneity of the adventure.

It was like the time a few weeks ago when a group of us tried to go hang gliding. We had bought a groupon deal almost a year ago and were pumped to soar in the sky like a bird for a while. Instead of flight, we received lessons and a few good seconds of airtime as we learned how to move and adjust our body according to the glider and the wind. Still cool, sure…but it wasn’t what we thought it would be.

It was like the time I was in India and I begged and pleaded with the Lord to heal this 5-year-old girl of her inability to walk, speak, function like a human being and nothing happened.

I could probably list a thousand other instances where I wanted to do something or be a part of something that seemed awesome, but for whatever reason it ended up either not working out at all, or it simply was a disappointing experience.

I started processing this a bit on our long boat ride out to see the whales. And as much as I know truth, I really found myself in this struggle to believe that God wants good for me…even in the little things. Or that I’m scared to tell him things or ask for things or admit that I want anything at all, because I fear it won’t happen. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend I don’t want something and to be excited or thankful if it comes along.

In the grand scheme of life, I’m not sure it really matters that I see whales jumping, get to go on a skydiving or hang gliding adventure, or witness an actual physical healing. I think the thing that matters more is recognizing continued distortion of how I view the Lord. I say continued, because this is nothing new. At the end of the day, I don’t know if I fully believe that God cares about being good to me. I don’t know how to get there, and I feel like a ‘bad’ Christian because of it.

These are those times that people typically spout scripture at me and assure me that God is good. It’s one of those times where I know that…but in the middle of riding out the see the whales, I found it easier to convince myself that I wouldn’t actually see anything cool because cool things don’t really ever happen to me.

And so we rode on…and on…and on. We circled around for a long while, and my projection began to seem more and more likely. No whales for us. But then?? There were some spotted in the distance. We pulled up closely and all of us ran to the side of the boat to capture a glimpse of the enormous beasts. I clicked away at my camera, catching a tail or two or the backside of a whale (which really just looked like a log).

Every time I got to a place to see or take a better picture, it seemed I had just missed it. A woman next to me commented, ‘You’re bad luck. Anytime you get close, they disappear.’ Ha! I felt like she had just spoken the story of my life. Even in the midst of getting to see the whales, all I felt was disappointment… and I knew that somewhere deep in me, I blamed God for it.

My brother and I stayed on one side of the ship when mostly everyone else was on the other side. A few moments later, 2 whales (a mama and a baby) decided to come to our side. We had a perfect view.

And while I didn’t get the picture of a whale in midair that day, I got this one…and I love it. As we lingered, we watched this babe and mom roll over, flap their pectoral fins, slap their tails. Apparently a lot of the behavior we got to witness was ‘rare’.

It was here that the Lord reminded me that He is good…even if it’s different than I want or expect. I think I learn this lesson a lot–and I might continue to for the rest of my life. Sometimes we just need reminders.

Things I know?
God is good.
Things I believe?
God is good.

And beyond just living like that, I want it to infiltrate the way that I think…so when things don’t necessarily go the way that I hoped, I might just genuinely believe that it’s better.

As we struggle through the commotion in our minds/hearts over what it means to truly follow Jesus and how the external and the internal bleed into one another…may we find the joy of simply trusting that He is exactly who He says that He is.

And may there be no disappointment in that.

I’m kind of a beast.

Not the kind of beast who is strong and awesome at everything she does. The kind that is literally a beast. A hairy one.

I’ve been going through a bunch of old photos recently as I work on an ‘on-the-side’ work project, and I came across this gem:

Yes, that’s a picture of one of my arms next to one of my guy friends’ arms. Can you even tell whose arm is whose? I wish I could say the hair was always that blonde, but this was immediately following a summer of being out in the sun.

This is the one thing I’ve try to hide about myself more than anything else. In my list of things I always wanted in a guy, ‘hairier than me’ was pretty high up there. It was mortifying to watch people’s eyes drift as they caught a glimpse of my arm and know exactly what they were thinking. I sometimes avoided little kids because while the rest of the world seemed able to resist saying anything about it, kids lacked the filter and, with disgust, commented on how hairy my arms were. Awesome.

I tried lots of things to fix it–Nair, shaving, waxing… my mom even felt so sorry for me she took me in for 3 treatments of laser hair removal. It didn’t work. I gave up trying and decided to embrace my naturally woven arms. Keep in mind that this is just my arms we’re talking about so far (although, I do relish the thickness of my head hair, ensuring that I’ll most likely not go bald in my old age…).

One summer my hairiness taught me a very valuable lesson. I was a 3rd summer returning counselor, meaning I was a little cocky and thought I was ‘too old’ to learn anything new. I had a group of students that I had had before, and while not all the students were the same, I felt extremely comfortable with the leaders and several of the campers.

On this particular day we were out on a hike, and my co-counselor and I got the brilliant idea to create a complicated mess of a team challenge for the group. The group would carry a blindfolded and mute me to our next destination. It was brilliant because I could no longer talk or see or walk… but it was simultaneously terrible because I could no longer talk or see or walk.

As soon as we began, comments starting flying.
‘Dang Hammer (because that’s what I was called back then…)… you’ve got junk in the trunk!’ was a favorite of mine that I remember from that day. Never before had I been insecure about the size of my tailend… until now. There was a wide array of complaining, moaning, and struggling to move just a few feet.

I stayed mute, and left my partner to lead the exercise. It wasn’t long before I heard a commotion and one of our youngest campers was down for the count- defeated by heat exhaustion. My partner decided to run back to camp to get a vehicle to take the boy in. That left me alone, in all my camper’s arms… not talking, seeing, or walking…because I wasn’t entirely sure what all was even happening.

They kept talking and complaining…commenting about how heavy I was and how hard this task was. I wondered if they had forgotten that I could still hear everything they were saying. I was getting pretty frustrated, but everything ended when the following was said:

‘Dang Hammer, you have a beard!!!’

Something internal snapped and immediately I was able to talk, see and walk again. I scurried out of their arms, very aware that a hot mess of tears was about to explode down my face. I was humiliated, called out on something I’m not even sure was true, but in that moment I felt exposed and naked. I took off down the road, leaving my entire group to fend for themselves with one sponsor. I ran back to camp weeping, no longer able to hold it all in.

Fortunately, I passed my co-counselor on the road as he was driving to retrieve the dehydrated boy. I didn’t say much of anything, but one look on my face revealed to him how terribly upset I was. I kept walking back to camp and let him take care of the group. When I got there, the first person I saw was my boss. I went up to him, told him he should fire me because I had just left my entire group on the side of the road.

He was kind and showed much grace as we talked through the situation. I wasn’t fired that day.

I tell this story because, while humiliating, this catastrophic event allowed for the Lord to work in a way that I never would have expected. As the group apologized to me, I was able to forgive. My co-counselor and I ended up washing their feet that night. Guess who put their faith in the Lord that night? The boy who had both commented on my junk in the trunk and my beard.

It’s kind of surreal thinking about it.
The lesson I learned was all about how the Lord can use even the things we are most ashamed of, most embarrassed about…the thing we try to hide the most… for His glory. It was a life-altering moment of recognizing that even (what I think are) the ugliest parts of me can still be beautiful.

I’ve told this story a few times since then–all with this same desire and hope that others will seize this and not live in fear of being ‘exposed’. There is nothing hidden that will not be made known, and I’ve found a lot of freedom in being able to openly talk about my biggest insecurities. There’s been freedom as the Lord has used that and reminded me that it’s not about me.

Shoot… wouldn’t we all want our beards to be brought to everyone’s attention if it meant that someone else knows Jesus by the end of the day?

So, what is it for you?
What things do you try to hide from the world? What things are you most ashamed of?
And what are ways that the Lord might be able to use that for His glory? ‘Cause it can be done. Be open to it. Ha.. and even if you aren’t? I imagine you’ll find out, one way or another.

Also- I’m not saying go out and flaunt your biggest insecurities (’cause, don’t worry, I now regularly shave my arms)… I’m just saying those things can be good and it’d be sweet if we could adopt a mentality of believing that even our ‘ugliest’ things really can be exquisite.

A little at a time.

When I left college there was a sort of comfort in the fact that almost all of my friends were leaving at the exact same time. We all had new places to be, new adventures to go on, new friends to make… we were all saying goodbye. It’s how high school was, too.

This is the first time in life that I’ve been the only one to really leave and to know that life continues on as normal without me. I’m the only one going… and I feel the loneliness set in.

I’m not even sure if it’s really fully hit me that I’m gone for good, but there are waves of realization that hit me from time to time. I struggle to keep my head above them, and sometimes I succeed and other times I feel myself give in to pull of the current. It hurts.

And then I pop back up again, I see the horizon full of the unknown and my heart leaps with excitement once more.

I feel stuck in this cycle every day. Eagerly anticipating what’s next, but still mourning as each day reminds me of something else that I’m no longer a part of. I have to remind myself that there’s hope, that there’s better, that it hasn’t even been that long and that there are to be months of feeling unsettled because that’s exactly what I’ll be.

I don’t want to be honest about it, either.
I want the transition to be easy and painless and good–and I want it to be like that because I know it’s right. But, even if it’s right, I see now that the journey involves a rougher course than just smooth sailing.

I don’t want to write because I feel unable to even process my own emotions in the midst of saying goodbye to everything I’ve ever known. Starting over again feels weird because I’m mostly just facing the black abyss of the unknown as I stare at my future. There are decisions to be made- decisions that are weighty because of the financial ramifications, the time requirements, the importance of being sure.

I’m never sure.
How are you supposed to decide something when you’re never sure?

My brother recently told me that it’ll all probably get worse before it gets better. I think he’s right.
This is one of the moments where you know all the right things, you know all the comforting things… but those aren’t the things that move you into a better place.

This one of those moments where all I can do is cling to hope, the anchor of my soul.
But, sometimes I think it’s okay to be sad.
Sometimes I think we forget that…and we try to always be ‘perfect’ and happy (or at least appear that way to everyone else). Sometimes I think we don’t want to believe there’s a time to mourn…or that we think we appear weak when we actually need to just be sad.

I may be mourning quite a bit these next few months- but, I may not be. I don’t know what the future holds. I do know there is hope, and that there’s much to seize in stepping into the unknown. I am excited about that, albeit a distant excitement right now.

I hope you feel the freedom to mourn if you need to today. Maybe you’ve left something/someone, too… maybe it’s a church, a city, a community, a relationship, a friendship, a loved one, a job, a school. Maybe you’ve had recent loss and you really need to allow yourself time to mourn. I hope you do.

I also hope that we aren’t people who wallow in that sorrow or sadness… but that we might healthily mourn and still live life to the fullest each day. That we can live life with a perspective of ultimately caring about the things that truly matter, even when it has nothing to do with ourselves (which is typically always).

I just needed to be honest about where my heart was tonight, even if I didn’t want to be.
Thanks for listening (….reading?)
Thanks for letting me be sad.

If you’ve never ridden a Segway before, you should. 

The comment:

How do you tactfully let a guy who’s probably interested know that you’re not interested? If they haven’t brought it up explicitly it would seem weird to bring it up, but also I don’t want to lead them on.

I am the absolute worst at ignoring people so… I hope there is another way.

Like.. what do you say when a guy says, “Let’s talk about you. You’re my favorite topic.” How the heck do you respond to that when you’re not interested??? (which by the way.. that moment has long passed)

I feel really guilty knowing that I might accidentally be leading guys on.

Oh, what a fun topic we have here!
I’d hate to say it, but there’s probably not one generic answer to this problem. Different things need to happen based on who he is, the relationship/friendship you have with him, and who you are.

Ignoring doesn’t have to be your first solution (not yet, anyway…you may eventually have to go there, though).

First of all- let’s look at who YOU are. How do you typically interact with others? What’s your personality like? Instead of doing something that’s within a textbook answer of ‘how to tell a guy you’re not interested’, I think it’s valuable to look at yourself, how you communicate best with others, and to cater to your strengths as you go about this. You may have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone, but I think it’s important to know where your comfort zone begins and ends.

Now- take a look at your current relationship with this person. Is he a friend? An acquaintance? To what degree have you shared your lives/hearts with each other? Is he a confidant in any regard…or is he simply a guy who found you attractive and began the pursuit, but you’ve been a bit distant from the get-go because you weren’t ever interested? Understanding your relationship with him is going to be key as well as you attempt to communicate a lack of interest in anything beyond friendship.

Do you even want to salvage a friendship, or would you really just prefer to leave it on the acquaintance level? Know what you want, know what you think is most beneficial–and know that you don’t always get what you want. You may be giving up an incredible friend because you can’t date him, and you have to be okay with that. He might not be ready to keep up a friendship with you if he can’t date you. Understand that it might be hard for him and you need to give him time and space to heal and lick his wounds.

Finally- evaluate who he is. This may be hard if you don’t know him very well, but hopefully you’ll know if he’s the type of guy who appreciates full-fledged honesty or if he likes things a bit sugarcoated. Hopefully you’ll know if he’s the type of guy who isn’t going to fully grasp what you’re saying unless you start ignoring him, or if he’s capable of hearing your words and maintaining a friendship without hope for more.

And, when it comes down to it, you’ll simply have to do something you don’t like/want to do: let him know you simply aren’t interested. If you haven’t talked about it, you don’t need to tell him you’re not interested. He’ll eventually pick up on it if you distance yourself from the situation. You don’t need to ignore him, but (depending on all those things above) you can respond less frequently, you can answer questions without asking a question back, you can make sure you’re only hanging out in group settings. He’ll get the picture.

If he’s still not, you may need to start ignoring him altogether. Honestly, at that point, it’s ridiculous that he hasn’t said anything to you about his feelings for you thus far and if he’s not going to bring it up, there’s no reason that you should have to bring it up. Plus you run the risk of rejecting someone who might claim to not even be interested in you at all, and then you feel quite dumb (no, I’ve never done it, but I had someone do it to me when I wasn’t actually interested in them and it was quite demeaning).

If you simply can’t stand the thought of ignoring him, feel free to say things along the lines of, ‘I think we should text/hang out/talk/email less’. You’re not accusing him of having feelings for you, but you’re making it very obvious that you want communication to decrease.

Oh, and when he says ridiculously things like, ‘You’re my favorite topic’–don’t say anything back that would encourage more statements like that. Here’s when knowing yourself comes in handy. I’d probably say something sarcastic or awkward…but something that would definitely communicate, ‘I’m uncomfortable with what you said and I don’t want you to say anything like it again’. Some might simply be that brutally honest. Know yourself and be willing to respond in such a way that discourages further comments like that!

Be bold out there.
If you really don’t want to lead him on, don’t.
And don’t be that girl who says she doesn’t want to, but secretly does because it’s nice to have the attention (yes, I’ve been that girl before, too). Follow through with what you say, even if it means ‘being mean’. He’ll appreciate it in the long run, especially if he literally has no chance with you.

You’ve got this!

I think, oftentimes, that we’re desperate.

Desperate for what…?
It depends.
I’d venture to say that it most commonly falls within the realm of companionship. It’s pretty funny to see the statistics on my blog and how much more they increase when a topic has to do with love, dating, sex, relationships, etc. etc. We’re desperate.

We’re desperate to know the answers.
We’re desperate to know how to make a relationship work, how to act within a relationship, what boundaries to set, how to love well, how to get someone to love us in return. We’re desperate to be desirable to the opposite sex, we’re desperate to not be lonely any longer, we’re desperate for all of our ‘dreams’ to come true. We’re desperate.

We feel hopeless and it leads to despair.
Our minds are raided and we’re left thinking that we’ll never meet anyone for 5 million different reasons. We’re left thinking that we are too messed up to ever be in a relationship. We’re left thinking that no one would ever want us. We’re left thinking that our lives could never look different.

This is what matters to most of us, more than anything else.
Sometimes I think we lie when we say it’s not.
We want to find love.
It’s why we watch the movies we watch, it why we make the decisions that we make. It’s why, when we are finally in a relationship, our world often gets completely wrapped up in it and we forget that other people also exist.

I’ve watched people lose themselves in relationships, I’ve watched them be all consumed… and then I’ve watched them be completely devastated when said relationship doesn’t work out.

Because we are desperate, we believe that these relationships (when successful) will fill the void.
But what if our desperation is misplaced? What if, no matter how perfect your relationships might be, you’re still lonely, or insecure, or desperate for more?

There’s a worship song that most of us have been singing for years and I get frustrated by it. Aside from the repetition and the slowness of it, I don’t think we really grasp what it means to be desperate for the Lord…. because we’re too focused on being desperate for things of this world.

Desperate: feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with. 

We know how to be desperate with our loneliness… but do we know how to be desperate for Jesus? Truly desperate? And I realize it’s probably not a learned thing, but more of a realization that He is what matters and that without Him, we truly are hopeless. Or, do we find glimmers of hope in other things… like the possibility of a date?

I’m guilty.
There are moments when I truly realize my depravity, but I’d say the large majority of the time, my desperation is geared toward everything but my need for Jesus.

I had a friend tell me once that he wanted to be desperate for Jesus- to know what they really meant. I understand that now. I want it to. I need to know how much I need Him… all the time. I need to stop being desperate for other things.

What are you desperate for?
Truly and honestly….?
Be willing to go there with yourself.
And maybe you’re in a place of realizing how desperate you are of the saving grace of Jesus Christ, but if you’re not… maybe you want to go there with me now.

May we be a people who don’t easily forget just how truly desperate we are for Him, and may our hope stem from Him and the life that He offers. May everything else not be the things that we hope for or hope in… but just things we get to experience/enjoy on this side of eternity.

The comment:

I’ve set boundaries in my previous relationships with guys, but they never seem to work out. I, well we, usually push our limits and the next thing I know we’ve gone passed our “set” boundary. This leaves me sleepless feeling so guilty and sinful. Things in the past can’t be changed, that is so hard. Is there still hope for a second chance? What can i do to see I don’t find myself in this predicament again? 

There’s always hope for a second chance. I wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t.

Sexual boundaries are always a fun topic- we all want to know as much as we can about sex, we want to know how far we can go before it’s ‘too’ far, and we want to have the freedom to do it without the guilt that quickly accompanies it.

My answer for you is pretty simple…but it doesn’t make it any easier.

You get to choose.
That’s really all there is to it. In any moment, with any guy, you are ultimately choosing what you want. You get to choose whether or not you put yourself in situations that you know you’ll have a hard time saying no in. You get to choose if you actually stick to the boundaries that you’ve established with your boyfriend/girlfriend. You get to choose how you respond if you ‘mess up’ and how you proceed from there.

Things that can help? Finding someone who has similar values as you in this particular arena is very beneficial. If he/she honestly wants to remain within the boundaries that have been set, accomplishing this will be easier if they are actually on board. If they say that they are, but are teasing, tempting and pushing the limits constantly, they might not have been that honest with you in the first place.

I’ve also found, in my experiences, that the more you frequent places of sexual temptation, the more tempted you’ll be. Meaning, the more often you make out with your boyfriend/girlfriend, the more likely it is that you’ll want to do it more and the more likely it is that you’ll push the limits. I realized that in past relationships where physical limits were stretched too thin, it was the relationships where our alone time was spent wrapped up in each other’s arms. It was all I thought about during the day… when the next time I could be in his arms was going to be.

On the contrary, there have been more recent relationships where the physical aspect was a much rarer occurrence. It seemed that the rarity allowed for our relationship to blossom in other ways because thoughts of sex weren’t all-consuming. Every time we were alone it wasn’t with the goal of getting all close and personal– there was something much deeper to our relationship than that.

Accountability is always a helpful thing– going to places where you know others will be. Don’t invite him/her over when you know you’re home alone for the night. Choose to go to his place instead, where his roommates are. Ultimately, if you want to be alone with them because you want to make out with them, you’re going to find a way.

And this is where it always comes down to you choosing.

Trust me…I’ve definitely been in the boat where I didn’t care because I wanted to make out and so I made bad decisions. But, I didn’t have to… I just wanted to. I’ve also been in the boat where I’ve chosen what was good. And it’s better. It really, really is.

It’s possible.
The Lord doesn’t tempt you… and there’s always a way out… if you want to take it. I think there’s always a problem with not really wanting the way out.

So, you get to decide it’s worth it.
Decide that purity matters to you…and then live in it.
Decide that you’re going to believe God is full of grace and second chances…and then live in it.
And, if you don’t want purity right now…?
I pray that you would want it… heck, I even pray that you would want to want it.

And then be a person who stands firm in what you believe, no matter what.

It is possible. 

I feel like I roll my eyes at Christianity a lot. Maybe sometimes it’s actually more of a cringing that occurs.